El castellano en las Filipinas.

Question

El castellano fue eliminado como lengua oficial en 1987 y ahora lo hablan o tienen algunos conocimientos, menos del 3 por ciento del total de los 92 millones de habitantes de Filipinas.

¿Por qué se escribieron en el plural?

Answer 1

In English, what Bosque is saying is that the subject "the 3 percent of the 92 million inhabitants" doesn't appear until the end of the sentence. We have some people on this site whose knowledge of Spanish is astounding, but they haven't had the teacher-training to help them explain things more simply. So the three percent of the "inhabitants" being plural, gets the plural ending "hablan" o "tienen"

Did that help at all?? Enquiring minds want to know.

See my post on "How do you teach a Spanish class?" - Daniela2041, Nov 15, 2014

I bosque, I hope you don't mind too much my butting in. But my life is teaching. I can't help it. - Daniela2041, Nov 15, 2014

Answer 2

El castellano fue eliminado como lengua oficial en 1987 y ahora menos del 3 por ciento del total de los 92 millones de habitantes de Filipinas lo hablan o tienen algunos conocimientos,.

menos del 3 por ciento del total de los 92 millones de habitantes de Filipinas= subject of hablan o tienen

lo= direct object of the verbs= El castellano.

They speak it. Less than 3% speak castellano.

It depends on whether you consider less than 3% as being plural or not- if it is plural (which is how I would do it in English- less than 3% are) it is clear. If you think it is singular then probably it is due to the distance and word order, see here:

http://spanish.about.com/od/nouns/g/collectivnoungl.htm

In standard English, collective nouns, when the subject of a sentence, are typically used with a singular verb: "The class of studentsstudies hard." In Spanish, a verb that immediately follows a collective noun is singular: La gente tiene mucho dinero.("The people have a lot of money." Note that this is an example of a Spanish singular noun that normally requires a plural translation in English.) But when there is a plural noun between the collective noun and verb, either a singular or plural verb can be used in everyday speech and writing, with the plural verb probably being more common. Thus you might hear both La bandada de pájaros seacercó ("The flock of birds approached," singular verb) and La bandada de pájaros seacercarón ("The flock of birds approached," plural verb), with no appreciable difference in meaning.